In a fantastic story of non-news today American Eagle has announced they’re changing their name to Envoy. It really doesn’t matter to passengers in any appreciable way. When you buy a ticket today operated by American Eagle the booking screen tells you that in small print:
Once this change happens the information will be essentially the same thing, but it will say “Envoy” there instead of “American Eagle Airlines.”
The American Eagle name/brand is not going away. It will now represent all of the regional/express operations flying under the American Airlines brand. Historically there was only Eagle so those were essentially the same thing. Now AA has sourced some flying to other regional operators and with the US Airways merger there are a whole slew of other regional operators which will be joining the party. And all of those flights will eventually be known as “American Eagle, operated by <regional carrier name>” when they fly. From a potential passengers confusion perspective it makes sense to not be “American Eagle, operated by American Eagle.”
The entertaining part of the move to me is that the Envoy name is not particularly new to the combined AA/US operation. It is the name US Airways uses for their long-haul premium cabin offering rather than just calling it business class. And, going forward, all these seats on the 180ish ERJs will be Envoy. I know that some have tried to play the “Every seat on board is first class” line – one which no one in their right mind believes. Good luck finding something like the above on your RJ flight. On the plus side, I suppose they already own all the trademark rights they’ll need.
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I think actually it will say “Operated by Envoy as American Eagle” or something similiar, like SkyWest does now.
I should’ve chosen a career in marketing, so I could come up with goofy nonsense like the Envoy name change. I actually laughed out loud at this!